Prescient?

The American people seem to be doing less and less thinking for themselves and they seem to have less and less knowledge of the history and basic principles of the American Republic....It seems to me that the people have come to form their opinions, not from facts and their own thinking, but the thinking and opinions of others. Perhaps it is due to the development of motion pictures and radio. To listen to either requires only the slightest mental effort. They are a kind of education or recreation which gives knowledge without thought....The truth is that there is hardly one [commentator or columnist] who has not a strong bias for one philosophy or another, for one party or another, for one man or another. This they attempt to conceal, and the unthinking are likely to take them at their own estimate of impartiality....The radio is a peculiarly plausible instrument, more so than the written word....But even the news today in many newspapers is given a strong slant in the direction of the paper's policy....Public opinion is formed without any real knowledge or analysis of the facts of the issues.
-Robert A. Taft (1947)